The invention relates to refrigeration equipment, and more specifically to equipment for providing and re-circulating chill air to an aircraft galley food service system, and for keeping the temperature of galley food and beverages at the required food storage temperature.
Air chillers for aircraft galley food service systems are known. The existing air chillers designed for aircraft galley food service systems are installed in a remote location outside of the galley cart compartment because it has historically been difficult to locate air chillers close to galley. A further complicating factor is that galley designs are different for various aircraft configurations. Therefore, existing air chiller designs require refrigeration testing and balancing at the galley manufacturer and on first delivery for each new aircraft configuration.
Normally, an air chiller needs to service more than one galley compartment. The chiller runs whenever a single compartment requires cooling, and therefore consumes more energy than is necessary in this situation, since it is also chilling other empty compartments. Large capacity chillers are typically equipped with a powerful evaporator fan to recirculate chill air to different galley compartments, and a large amount of electrical power is needed in order to overcome the pressure loss in the air ducting system.
Known large capacity chillers produce significant air noise in chilled air outlets. The individual units are heavy, bulky, and not easy to handle. Given that there are many sizes of chillers available for different cooling requirements, airline customers typically must have many different chillers on hand in order to provide spare chillers when needed.